The 


Botany  of  Shakespeare 


A  PAPER  READ  BEFORE 

The  Contemporary  Club 

DAVENPORT,  IOWA 
BY 

THOMAS  H.  MACBRIDE 

1899 


Privately  Reprinted 
By  T  J  Fitzpatrick 
Iowa  City  Iowa 
January  20  1912 


Publication  Series 
No.  2 

Fifty  five  copies  on  vellum 


530,4- 

MlZb 


Q. 

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THE  BOTANY  OF  SHAKESPEARE 


THE  universality  of  Shakespeare  is  the  common  remark 
of  critics.  Other  great  men  have  been  versatile; 
Shakespeare  alone  is  universal.  He  alone  of  all  great  men 
seems  to  have  been  able  to  follow  his  own  advice,  “to  hold 
as  it  were  the  mirror  up  to  Nature.”  On  the  clear  surface 
of  his  thought,  as  on  a  deep  Alpine  lake,  the  whole  shore  lies 
reflected — not  alone  the  clouds,  the  sky,  the  woods,  the 
^castles,  the  rocks,  the  mountain  path  by  which  the  shepherd 
strolls;  not  alone  the  broad  highway  by  which  may  march 
the  king  in  splendor,  the  peasant  with  his  wain;  but  even  the 
humbler  objects  by  the  still  water’s  edge,  the  trodden  grass, 
the  fluttering  sedge,  the  broken  reed,  the  tiniest  flower,  all 
things,  all  Nature  in  action  or  repose  finds  counterpart  within 
the  glassy  depths. 

Hence  it  is  that  no  man,  at  least  no  English-speaking  man, 
reads  Shakespeare  wrong.  Everybody  understands  him. 
Here  is  a  sort  of  Anglo-Saxon  Bible  in  which,  so  far  as  the 
*  world  goes,  every  soul  finds  himself,  with  all  his  hopes,  his 
J  doubts,  his  whims,  depicted.  We  are  therefore  not  surprised 
^  that  everybody  claims  a  share  in  Shakespeare;  rather  claims 
the  poet  as  his  own.  The  Protestant  is  sure  that  Shakespeare 
k  despised  the  hierachy;  the  Romanist  is  quite  as  certain  that 
he  loved  the  Church.  There  exists  an  essay  to  prove  him  a 
q  Presbyterian;  another  to  show  that  the  great  dramatist  was  a 
Universalist.  A  volume  has  been  written  to  prove  the  man 
“7  a  soldier;  another  that  he  was  a  lawyer,  a  printer,  a  fisher- 
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The  Contemporary  Club 


man,  a  freemason,  and  here  are  five  or  six  articles  to  show 
that  Shakespeare  was  a  gardener.* 

All  this  simply  means  that  the  poet  had  a  marvelous  faculty 
for  close  observing;  that  his  vision  was  accurate,  his  instinct 
wonderfully  true.  It  may  be  therefore  worth  our  while  to 
study  for  a  little  this  remarkable  man  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
naturalist,  to  see  how  he  who  so  vividly  paints  a  passion  can 
paint  a  flower;  how  the  man  who  limns  a  character,  till 
be}^ond  the  phonograph  it  starts  to  actuality,  will  catch  the 
essential  feature  of  some  natural  truth. 

We  shall  nowhere  lack  for  material.  The  plays  are  full  of 
references  to  plants  and  flowers  of  every  sort.  England  in 
Shakespeare’s  day,  as  now,  was  a  land  of  bloom,  and  the  poet 
but  reflects  the  loveliness  of  beauty  and  color  spread  about 
him.  But  he  does  something  more.  He  is  not  content  with 
flashes  of  color  and  breathings  of  odor,  he  goes  into  detail 
and  gives  us  the  individual  plant  unmistakably.  In  his 
description  he  shows  an  exactitude,  a  discriminating  percept¬ 
ion  that,  had  it  been  turned  to  Nature’s  problems  seriously 
at  all,  must  at  once  have  transformed  the  science  of  its  age. 
But  Shakespeare  was  not  a  man  of  science;  he  was  a  poet. 
In  his  views  of  Nature  he  resembles  the  great  poets  of  the 
world,  notably  Goethe;  and,  like  Goethe,  he  not  infrequently 
outruns  the  science  of  his  time,  uses  his  imagination,  divining 
things  invisible.  Moreover,  Shakespeare’s  plants  are  living 
things;  they  form  a  garden,  not  a  herbarium.  They  stand 
before  us  in  multitudes,  so  that  it  is  difficult  for  the  present 
purpose  to  know  what  to  select.  We  must  be  content  with 
a  few  specimen  forms  brought  out  in  quotations  no  more 
extensive  that  seems  necessary  to  the  argument.  Of  course, 


*In  preparation  of  this  article,  the  author  has  consulted  chiefly  the  fol¬ 
lowing:  John  Gerarde,  The  Herball  or  General  Historie  of  Plants,  1597; 
Shakespeare,  Edward  Dowden,  1872;  William  Shakespeare,  Works,  Globe 
edition,  1867 ;  Natural  History  of  Shakespeare,  Bessie  Mayou,  1877;  Shakes¬ 
peare’s  England,  William  Winter,  1894;  The  Plant-lore  and  Garden-craft  of 
Shakespeare,  H.  F.  Ellacombe,  1896;  The  Gardener’s  Chronicle;  sundry 
pamphlets,  and  shorter  articles. 


4 


The  Botany  of  Shakespeare 


there  are  many  plants  today  discussed  of  which  Shakespeare 
never  heard.  He  does  not  speak  of  many  sorts  of  fungi,  of 
slime  moulds,  microbes;  he  knew  nothing  about  these.  The 
microscope  had  hardly  been  invented,  and  the  unseen  world 
was  as  yet  largely  personified.  And  yet  Shakespeare  has 
not  failed  to  note  the  visible  signs  of  some  of  our  microscopic 
forms.  Critics  have  wasted  their  time  and  the  patience  of 
mankind  in  an  effort  to  identify  Hebona,  the  “leperous  distil - 
ment”  poured  into  the  porches  of  the  royal  ear.  Almost 
profitless  are  such  discussions.  Yet  we  may  note  that  we 
have  here  to  do  with  an  effect;  the  means  of  producing  it 
need  not  be  too  closely  questioned.  Before  the  rush  of 
action,  the  weird  setting,  the  voice  of  an  apparition,  the 
excited  audience  cares  not  what  the  mysterious  vial  may  con¬ 
tain — ebony,  henbane,  yew,  or  whether  it  were  entirely 
empty.  What  is  called  for  is  a  speedy  and  mysterious  taking 
off.  Had  the  scene  been  laid  in  Italy,  the  effect  had  been 
reached  by  the  fateful  prick  of  a  jeweled  pin,  some  ring  upon 
a  Borgian  finger  whose  pressure  was  the  paralysis  of  death. 
But  the  king  died  of  no  such  curari.  Note  the  symptoms 
(Hamlet,  i,  5,  64-73) : 

“The  leperous  distilment;  whose  effect 
Holds  such  enmity  with  blood  of  man 
That  swift  as  quicksilver  it  courses  through 
The  natural  gates  and  alleys  of  the  body, 

And  with  a  sudden  vigour  it  doth  posset 
And  curd,  like  eager  droppings  into  milk, 

The  thin  and  wholesome  blood ;  so  did  it  mine; 

And  a  most  instant  tetter  barked  about, 

Most  lazar  like,  with  vile  and  loathsome  crust, 

All  my  smooth  body.  ” 

These  are  the  symptoms  of  blood-poisoning,  vividly  portrayed; 
of  some  contagion,  communicable  by  infection.  In  foul  old 
London  Shakespeare  had  doubtless  seen  endemic,  zymotic 
diseases  of  every  description,  and  drew'  his  picture  from  the 
life.  Royal  blood  is  notoriously  unsound,  royal  habit  leaves 
the  porches  of  royal  ears  especially  exposed.  On  our  suppo- 


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sition  the  vial  need  not  have  contained  very  much,  not  even 
ebony.  The  dramatist  had  plenty  of  mystery  ready  to  his 
hand,  and  the  Hebona  is  perhaps  intentionally  ambiguous. 
Bacterial  diseases  were  of  old  called  plagues;  they  fell  from 
heaven.  Listen  to  King  Lear : 

“Now  all  the  plagues  that  in  the  pendulous  air 
Hang  fated  o’er  men’s  faults,  light  on  my  daughters!” 

or  Caliban: 

“All  the  infections  that  the  sun  sucks  up 
From  bogs,  fens,  flats,  on  Prosper  fall  and  make  him 
By  inch-meal  a  disease!” 

Or  they  were  attributed,  as  already  intimated,  to  unseen  per¬ 
sonal  agencies: 

“This  is  the  foul  fiend  Flibbertigibbet:  he  begins  at  curfew,  and  walks 
till  the  first  cock;  he  gives  the  web  and  the  pin,  squints  the  eye,  and  makes 
the  hare-lip;  mildews  the  white  wheat,  and  hurts  the  poor  creature  of  earth .  ” 

I  quote  this  latter  rather  also  to  show  the  accurac}'  and  com¬ 
pass  of  Shakespeare’s  vision.  How  many  people,  not  farmers, 
have  seen  wheat  whitened  by  the  blight!  And  that  is  exactly 
the  description,  white  not  “to  the  harvest,”  but  whiter  still  to 
sterility  and  death. 

But  leaving  aside  all  microscopic  forms  which  may  or  may 
not  be  incidentally  touched  upon  everywhere,  we  may  turn 
our  attention  next  to  cryptogamic  plants  which  are  positively 
defined.  The  sudden  springing  of  mushrooms,  for  instance, 
especially  at  night,  so  unreal  and  yet  withal  so  realistic,  made 
their  creation  a  suitable  trick  for  Prospero : 

“You  demi-puppets  that 
By  moonshine  do  the  green  sour  ringlets  make, 

Whereof  the  ewe  not  bites,  and  you  whose  pastime 
Is  to  make  midnight  mushrooms,  that  rejoice 
To  hear  the  solemn  curfew.” 

The  green  sour  ringlets  on  the  fields  “whereof  the  ewe  not 
bites”  are  fairy  rings.  The  same  thing  appears  in  the  speech 
of  Dame  Quickly: 


6 


The  Botany  of  Shakespeare 


“And  nightly,  meadow-fairies,  look  you  sing, 

Like  to  the  Garter's  compass,  in  a  ring; 

The  expressure  that  it  bears,  green  let  it  be, 

More  fertile-fresh  than  all  the  fields  to  see.” 

Fungi,  toadstools,  mushrooms,  and  so  forth,  are  fructifica¬ 
tions  only;  the  vegetative  part  of  the  plants  permeates  the  soil, 
4  feeds  on  its  organic  matter,  and  spreads  almost  equally,  we  may 
assume,  in  all  directions  from  the  point  of  starting.  When 
now  this  vegetative  growth  has  accumulated  energy  to  form 
fruit,  the  sporocarps  or  mushrooms  rise  all  around  at  the 
limits  of  activity:  hence,  in  a  circle. 

The  fungi  cut  a  small  figure  in  Shakespeare — i.e.,  consid¬ 
ering  their  numbers  and  almost  omnipresence.  But  we  must 
remember  that  they  were  at  this  time  studied  by  few,  their 
significance  and  interest  little  suspected.  They  formed  part 
of  the  realm  of  the  world  unseen;  they  came  and  went  at  the 
instance  of  powers  unknown,  mostly  personified,  imaginary,  a 
misty  population,  the  thought  of  which  kept  for  long  ages  the 
childhood  of  our  race  in  terror.  Shakespeare  saw  the  forms 
of  unstudied  plants,  everything  visible  to  the  naked  eye,  and 
really  omitted  very  little.  He  speaks  of  mosses — the  lichens 
were  included  with  them — chiefly  as  indicative  of  age  in  the 
object  in  which  they  rest: 

“Under  an  oak,  whose  boughs  were  mossed  with  age 
And  high  top  bald  with  dry  antiquity.” 

Then  again  he  simply  touches  them,  but  in  such  a  way  as  to 
reveal  his  full  appreciation  of  their  beauty,  as  in  Cymbeline, 
iv,  2.  For  the  decoration  of  Imogen’s  grave  the  ruddock 
would  bring  flowers— 

V  “  .  .  .  bring  thee  all  this; 

Yea,  and  furr’d  moss  besides,  when  flowers  are  none, 

To  winter-ground  thy  corse.” 

The  ‘‘furred  moss”  to  “winter-ground  thy  corse”  is  exquisite. 

Ferns,  though  so  much  larger,  so  handsome,  and  in  our  day 
so  all-attractive,  failed  generally  to  impress  our  fathers. 


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The  Contemporary  Club 


Butler,  writing  in  1670,  has  this  to  say: 

“They  spring  like  fern,  that  infant  weed, 

Equivocally  without  a  seed, 

And  have  no  possible  foundation 
But  merely  in  th’  imagination.’' 

Now,  as  far  as  Shakespeare  was  concerned,  ferns  answered 
his  purpose  without  seed  just  as  well  as  with  such  visible 
means  of  perpetuity.  His  only  reference  is  I  Henry,  iv, 
where  Gadshill  says: 

“We  have  the  receipt  of  fern-seed,  we  walk  invisible;” 
and  Chamberlain  replies : 

“Nay,  by  my  faith,  I  think  you  are  more  belonging  to  the 
Night  than  to  fern -seed  for  your  walking  invisible.” 

In  this  connection  Ellacombe  suggests  the  doctrine  of  signa¬ 
tures.  The  God  of  Nature  had  written  for  us  his  human 
children  prescriptions  all  over  the  leafy  world.  The  remedy 
indicated  by  its  form  its  own  application.  Thus  a  heart- 
shaped  leaf  was  good  medicine  for  cardiac  troubles,  a  lung¬ 
like  leaf  was  good  for  consumption,  a  lungwort  in  fact,  and 
so  a  liverwort,  a  spleenwort,  and  the  like.  Gerarde,  and,  in 
fact,  all  the  old  medical  writers  throughout  the  centuries,  are 
full  of  this.  Now,  what  more  natural  than  a  plant  which 
could  thus  perpetuate  itself  age  after  age  by  means  invisible 
should  be  able  to  confer  the  much-sought  gift  of  invisibility, 
the  power  to  disappear  and  reappear  at  pleasure?  Many 
people  so  believed.  Shakesperae  appears  to  have  been 
skeptical. 

Turn  we  now  to  the  flowering  plants;  the  amount  of  mate¬ 
rial  at  our  disposal,  as  already  indicated,  is  immense.  Shakes¬ 
peare  was  evidently  a  great  lover  of  flowers  simply  as  such. 
His  pages  from  first  to  last  are  ornate  with  color,  almost 
redolent  of  roses,  lilies,  eglantine,  with  every  conceivable 
metaphor  and  trope — “the  bud  of  love,”  the  “nettle  of  dan¬ 
ger,”  “the  flower  of  safety.”  Their  lovely  shapes  are  ever  * 
before  him;  he  is  spell-bound  with  their  beauty.  England] 


6 


The  Botany  of  Shakespeare 


itself  is  a  “sea-walled  garden.”  Grammatical  forms  may 
vanish,  if  only  the  flower  may  live.  Compare  Cymbeline,  ii,  3: 

“Hark,  hark!  the  lark  at  heaven’s  gate  sings, 

And  Phoebus  ’gins  arise, 

His  steeds  to  water  at  those  springs 
On  chaliced  flowers  that  lies” 

the  image  of  the  morning  flowers,  the  fiery  steeds  that  drink 
them  dry,  shall  fascinate  us  so  that  we  forget  the  grammar. 
It  will  not  do  to  say  lie;  the  word  must  rhyme  with  “arise” 
and  further  on  with  “eyes;” 

“And  winking  Mary-buds  begin 
To  ope  their  golden  eyes: 

With  everything  that  pretty  is, 

My  lady  sweet,  arise.” 

For  the  Queen  of  the  Faries  he  spreads  this  sort  of  a 
couch: 

“I  know  a  bank  where  the  wild  thyme  blows, 

Where  oxlips  and  the  nodding  violet  grows, 

Quite  over-canopied  with  luscious  woodbine, 

With  sweet  musk-roses  and  with  eglantine; 

There  sleeps  Titania  sometime  of  the  night, 

Lulled  in  these  flowers  with  dances  and  delight,”  etc. 

Such  cases  reveal  the  impress,  the  healthy  happy  impress 
which  Nature  could  exercise  on  this  the  foremost  man  of  all 
the  world,  the  harmony  between  Nature  and  Nature’s  child. 
All  the  plants  in  the  last  quotation  are  wild  flowers,  except  the 
musk-roses,  and  these  are  so  common  in  England  as  to  be 
almost  wild.  The  eglantine  was  the  sweetbrier,  said  to  be 
wild  in  all  the  southern  part  of  the  island  and  popular  in  the 
literature  of  all  recorded  centuries.  Gerarde  describes  as 
follows:  “The  leaves  are  glittering,  of  beautiful  green  color, 
of  smell  most  pleasant.  .  .  .  The  fruit  when  it  is  ripe  maketh 
most  pleasant  meats,  and  banqueting  dishes,  as  tarts  and  such 
like,  the  making  whereof  I  commit  to  the  cunning  cook,  and 
teeth  to  eat  them  in  the  rich  man’s  mouth.” 

The  sweetness  of  the  leaf  of  the  eglantine  is  referred  to  by 
Shakespeare  in  another  passage  which  I  venture  to  quote  now 

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The  Contemporary  Club 


for  another  purpose,  to  show  the  accuracy  of  his  description 
as  applied  to  simple  flowers.  The  lines  are  from  the  scene 
quoted  before.  Arviragus  and  Guiderius  would  bury  the 
swooning  Imogen.  They  think  her  dead  (Cymbeline,  iv,  2): 

“I’ll  sweeten  thy  sad  grave:  thou  shalt  not  lack 
The  flower  that’s  like  thy  face,  pale  primrose;  nor 
The  azured  harebell,  like  thy  veins;  no,  nor 
The  leaf  of  eglantine,  whom  not  to  slander, 

Out-sweetened  not  thy  breath.” 

Primroses  when  pale  are  the  palest  of  all  withering  plants. 
The  flowers  change  color  with  maturity,  especially  after 
fertilization.  The  paleness  of  the  primrose  is  the  pallor  of 
decay.  But  the  azure  harebell — behold  it  waving  on  its 
slender  stipe  beneath  the  shade  of  some  great  rock — who  can 
look  into  its  delicate  cerulean  cup  again  and  not  bethink  him 
of  the  blue-veined  eyelid  sleep  that  falls  upon  our  human 
flowers! 

The  same  accuracy  of  detail  is  evinced  in  many  other 
places.  Take,  for  instance,  Shakespeare's  description  of  the 
violet  all  the  way  through.  It  moves  him  chiefly  by  its  odor 
(King  John.,  iv,  2) : 

“To  gild  refined  gold,  to  paint  the  lily, 

To  throw  a  perfume  on  the  violet, 

To  smooth  the  ice,  to  add  another  hue 

Unto  the  rainbow,  or  with  taper-light 

To  seek  the  beauteous  eye  of  heaven  to  garnish, 

Is  wasteful  and  rediculous  excess.” 

Nevertheless,  we  have  violets  dim,  and  violets  blue,  and  purple 
violets,  and  more  particularly  “blue-veined”  violets,  as  if  the 
poet  looked  with  a  lens  into  the  very  throat  of  the  flower 
which  Frenchmen  call  a  thought.  “And  there  is  pansies — 
that's  for  thoughts.”  His  description  of  the  elm  is  equally 
exact  (Midsummer-Night's  Dream,  iv,  i,  47-49): 

“So  doth  the  woodbine  the  sweet  honeysuckle 
Gently  entwist ;  the  female  ivy  so 
Enrings  the  barky  fingers  of  the  elm.” 


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The  Botany  of  Shakespeare 

There  is  nothing  better  than  that,  as  you  may  prove  by  ex¬ 
amining  the  twigs  of  even  some  of  our  American  species;  the 
cork  elm,  for  instance.  The  hawthorn,  the  cedar,  and  the 
pine  and  the  oak  especially,  are  most  naturally  treated.  These 
are  Shakespeare’s  favorite  trees.  The  cedar  of  Shakespeare 
is  the  cedar  of  Lebanon,  commonly  planted  throughout  Europe 
since  the  time  of  the  crusades.  Shakespeare  had  probably 
seen  specimens  in  England.  He  uses  it  as  the  type  of  all  that 
is  great  and  fine.  One  author  thinks  he  copies  Ezekiel, 
chapter  xxxi.  The  pine  was  beside  him  all  the  while.  He 
knew  the  secret  of  the  pine  knot,  and  well  described  it 
(Troilus  and  Cressida,  i,  3) : 

“  .  .  checks  and  disasters 

Grow  in  the  veins  of  actions  highest  reared, 

As  knots,  by  the  conflux  of  meeting  sap, 

Deflect  the  sound  pine  and  divert  his  grain 
Tortive  and  errant  from  his  course  of  growth.” 

Any  one  who  has  ever  examined  the  case,  or  even  one  who 
has  handled  knotty  lumber,  has  seen  the  wood  fiber  run 
around  the  persistent  base  of  some  dead  limb,  and  can  appre¬ 
ciate  these. lines. 

All  these  quotations  show  that  Shakespeare  used  his  own 
eyes  and  used  them  well.  He  saw  the  real  distinctions  of 
things,  the  hoariness  on  the  willow  leaf.  He  found  character 
in  the  oak  as  in  the  king,  and  beauty  in  both.  In  many  of  his 
notices  of  natural  objects,  however,  the  poet  is  not  the  orig¬ 
inal  observer.  He  often  uses  current  opinions,  fancies, 
dreams,  for  these  also  were  the  realities  of  his  day,  quite  as 
much  sometimes  as  oaks  and  forests.  There  is  concerning 
plants  a  sort  of  orthodox  mythology,  and  thousands  of  years 
have  sometimes  contributed  to  the  reputation  borne  by  a  single 
species.  A  curious  illustration  is  found  in  what  Shakespeare 
has  to  say  about  the  mandrake  (Antony  and  Cleopatra,  i,  5): 

“Give  me  to  drink  mandragora. 

Why,  madam? 

\ _  That  I  might  sleep  out  this  great  gap  of  time.” 


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The  Contemporary  Club 


Othello,  iii,  3: 

“Not  poppy,  nor mandragora, 

Nor  all  the  drowsy  syrups  of  the  world, 

Shall  ever  medicine  thee  to  that  sweet  sleep 
Which  thou  owedst  yesterday." 

Juliet,  reflecting  on  her  proposed  entombment  in  the  dark 
grave  of  the  Capulets,  exclaims  (Romeo  and  Juliet,  iv,  3) : 

“Alack,  alack!  is  it  not  like  that  I, 

So  early  waking,  what  with  loathsome  smells, 

And  shrieks  like  mandrake’s  torn  out  of  the  earth, 

That  living  mortals,  hearing  them,  run  mad; 

Or,  if  I  wake,  shall  I  not  be  distraught, 

Environed  with  all  these  hideous  fears?" 

The  mandrake  Atropa  officinalis  belongs  to  the  Solanacec? , 
and,  like  others  of  the  family,  has  narcotic  properties.  This 
was  doubtless  known  to  Shakespeare,  as  in  the  passage  cited 
he  compares  the  mandrake  with  the  poppy.  The  groaning 
and  shrieking  are,  of  course,  the  purest  superstition.  The 
root  of  the  mandrake  was  supposed  to  resemble  the  human 
form.  The  favorite  habitat  assigned  to  the  plant  was  the  foot 
of  the  gallows,  and  men  believed  that  in  some  way  the  bodies 
of  criminals  were  reproduced  in  the  growing  plant ;  their  very 
pains  and  cries  renewed,  especially  for  him  who  profanely 
dared  to  pull  the  mandrake  from  the  earth.  The  curious  may 
consult  Gerarde. 

These  ideas,  it  is  needless  to  say,  are  very  old;  Pliny  refers 
to  them,  and,  if  I  recollect  well,  Vergil  has  his  hero  pull  up 
some  plant  amid  the  strangest  of  sights  and  sounds.  With 
these  old  myths  are  tied  up,  perchance,  the  mandrakes  of 
King  James’s  version.  Nay,  the  superstition  still  survives; 
look  at  the  wood  cut  in  Webster’s  Unabridged,  and  you  will 
discover  that  the  artist  who  set  out  to  illustrate  the  word 
mandrake  for  that  somewhat  venerable  authority  was  by  no 
means  able  to  free  himself  from  the  ancient  spell.  Credulity 
is  evermore  a  factor  in  the  compound  called  human  nature. 
Men  love  to  be  fooled,  or  to  find  some  support  for  belief  in 

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The  Botany  of  Shakespeare 


manifest  absurdity.  There  is  nothing  so  silly  but  has  its 
advocates  among  men  who  ought  to  know  better. 

A  year  or  two  since,  a  man  brought  from  Ohio  to  the  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Iowa  an  innocent  five-parted,  digitate,  black  fungus. 
It  was  treasured  in  alcohol.  Why?  Because  of  its  origin. 
An  honest  mechanic  meeting  with  accident  lost  his  fingers 
t  under  the  surgeon’s  knife.  The  amputated  members  were 
neglected,  but  presently  discovered  and  duly  buried  in  the 
garden.  The  following  spring  from  the  “identical  spot”  up- 
rose  a  swarthy  hand,  black  without,  white  within.  The  hand 
was  a  perfect  main-de-gloire  for  that  sensation-loving  com¬ 
munity.  The  matter  was  discussed  in  newspapers.  A  long 
and  careful  account  of  the  wonder  was  prepared,  put  in  print 
and  circulated  among  the  friends  of  the  deceased — fingers! 
“What  fools  we  mortals  be!”  For  sheer  superstition  and 
crass  stupidity  who  may  say  that  the  nineteenth  century  may 
not  yet  discount  the  days  of  the  Virgin  Queen? 

But  I  said  at  the  outset  that  Shakespeare  had  in  some 
instances  anticipated  modern  scientific  teaching.  To  illustrate 
this  in  its  most  striking  instance,  I  am  compelled  to  offer  a 
somewhat  long  quotation.  (Winter’s  Tale,  iv,  4,  76-  106) : 

“Polixenes.  Shepherdess, 

A  fair  one  are  you,  well  you  fit  our  ages 
With  flowers  of  winter. 

Perdita.  Sir,  the  year  growing  ancient 

Not  yet  on  summer’s  death,  nor  on  the  birth 
Of  trembling  winter,  the  fairest  flowers  o’  the  season 
Are  our  carnation  and  streaked  gillyvors, 

Which  some  call  nature's  bastards: of  that  kind 
Our  rustic  Garden’s  barren ;  and  I  care  not 
To  get  slips  of  them. 

Polixenes.  Wherefore,  gentle  maiden, 

▼  Do  you  neglect  them? 

Perdita.  For  I  have  heard  it  said 

There  is  an  art  which  in  their  piedness  shares 
With  great  creating  nature. 

Polixenes.  Say  there  be; 

Yet  nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean, 

But  nature  makes  that  mean;  so,  over  that  art 
|  Which  you  say  adds  to  nature,  is  an  art 


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That  nature  makes.  You  see,  sweet  maid,  we  marry 
A  gentle  scion  to  the  wildest  stock, 

And  make  conceive  a  bark  of  baser  kind 
By  bud  of  nobler  race :  this  is  an  art 
Which  does  mend  nature,  change  it  rather,  but 
The  art  itself  is  nature. 

Perdita.  So  it  is. 

Polyxenes.  Then  make  your  garden  rich  in  gillyvors, 

And  do  not  call  them  bastards.” 

Here  we  have  brought  out  very  distinctly  the  effect  of  cross¬ 
fertilization  in  flowers,  the  result  of  grafting  and  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  varieties.  Better  than  that,  we  have  here  the  recog¬ 
nition  of  that  tendency  in  organisms  to  vary  that  lies  at  the 
very  root  of  the  development  of  the  species.  Natural  selection, 
survival  of  the  fittest,  were  impossible  were  it  not  true  that 
“Nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean  but  Nature  makes  that 
mean;’'  or,  as  it  is  more  broadly  stated  a  few  lines  further  on, 
“This  is  an  art  which  does  mend  Nature,  change  it  rather, 
but  the  art  itself  is  Nature.”  I  consider  these  very  remark¬ 
able  statements  when  we  reflect  on  the  time  in  which  they 
were  written.  Darwin,  in  1860  does  but  unfold  the  thought. 
The  selection  which  Shakespeare  notes  as  practiced  by  gar¬ 
deners,  and  a  similar  selection  seen  in  the  world  of  domestic 
animals,  gave  Darwin  his  cue  of  natural  selection.  The 
beauty  of  Darwin’s  thesis  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  process  is 
natural,  and  such  is  Shakespeare’s  dictum.  Later  on,  lines 
112-128,  Perdita  brings  out  another  remarkable  observation 
that  has  only  lately  been  confirmed  by  the  conclusions  of 
science : 

“  .  .  .  Now  my  fairest  friend, 

I  would  I  had  some  flowers  o’  the  spring  that  might 
Become  your  time  of  day;  and  yours;  and  yours; 

That  wear  upon  your  virgin  branches  yet 
Your  maidenheads  growing:  O  Proserpina, 

For  the  flowers  now,  that  frighted  thou  let’st  fall 
From  Dis’s  wagon!  daffodils, 

That  come  before  the  swallow  dares,  and  take 
The  winds  of  March  with  beauty;  violets  dim. 

But  sweeter  than  the  lids  of  Juno’s  eyes 
Or  Cytherea’s  breath;  pale  primroses, 


14 


The  Botany  of  Shakespeare 


That  die  unmarried,  ere  they  can  behold 
Bright  Phoebus  in  his  strength — a  malady 
Most  incident  to  maids;  bold  oxlips  and 
The  crown  imperial;  lilies  of  all  kinds; 

The  flower-de-luce  being  one!” 

Primroses  are  dimorphic — i.  e.,  on  the  same  species  we  find 
flowers  of  different  sorts.  These  are  complete,  but  in  any 
particular  flower  the  essential  organs  fail  of  adaptation  to 
each  other — the  style  in  one  too  long,  in  another  too  short, 
to  receive  pollen  from  the  stamens  of  its  own  flower.  For 
fertilization  such  flowers  are  absolutely  dependent  upon  the 
assistance  brought  by  insect  visitors.  Perdita’s  primrose  is 
Primula  veris ,  the  early  primrose,  “that  takes  the  winds  of 
March  with  beauty,”  and  dies  ere  it  beholds  “bright  Phoebus 
in  his  strength,”  and  it  is  precisely  this  species  that  forms  the 
basis  of  one  of  Darwin’s  earliest  and  most  fruitful  studies  in 
the  cross-fertilization  of  flowers.  The  styles  in  one  form  of 
the  early  primrose  are  three  times  as  long  as  in  the  other,  the 
stigmas  differ  and  the  coadaption  of  the  parts  of  the  different 
flowers  extends  even  to  the  grains  of  pollen.  Such  flowers 
in  the  absence  of  insects  are  entirely  unproductive.  Insects 
are  rare  so  early  in  the  year,  and  accordingly  many  of  the 
primroses  die,  as  Perdita  says,  “unmarried.” 

Of  course,  it  is  not  pretended  that  Shakespeare  knew  any¬ 
thing  of  this;  but  that  he  should  have  discovered  the  fact  that 
the  early  primrose  bears  little  or  no  seed,  and  that  he  should 
have  been  impressed  by  the  truth  that  this  is  due  to  lack  of 
fertilization,  is  wonderful.  This  circumstance  might  well  lead 
to  the  suspicion  that  the  poet  was  a  gardener. 

We  must  not  forget  to  notice,  too,  in  this  connection  that 
carnations — i.  e.,  pinks — are  remarkable  for  the  great  num¬ 
ber  of  their  varieties.  We  have,  if  I  may  so  say,  pinks  of 
every  color,  from  crimson  to  white,  even  brown  it  is  said. 
This  was  true  in  Shakespeare’s  time  if  one  may  trust 
Gerarde  again;  he  says,  “A  great  and  large  volume  w^ould 
not  suffice  to  write  of  every  one  at  large  considering  how 
infinite  they  are,  and  how  every  year  the  climate  and  country 


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bringeth  forth  new  sorts  and  such  as  have  not  heretofore 
been  written  of.” 

Another  passage  in  which  the  poet  has  instinctively  hit 
upon  a  scientific  truth  is  found  in  Sonnet  V,  the  last  ten  lines. 

The  beauty  of  the  passage  as  a  whole  is  so  remarkable  that 
the  delicate  touches  in  particular  lines  are  apt  to  be  over¬ 
looked  : 

i 

“For  never  resting-time  leads  summer  on 
To  hideous  winter  and  confounds  him  there; 

Sap  checked  with  frost  and  lusty  leaves  quite  gone, 

Beauty  o’ersnowed  and  bareness  everywhere : 

Then,  were  not  summer’s  distillation  left, 

A  liquid  prisoner  pent  in  walls  of  glass, 

Beauty’s  effect  with  beauty  were  bereft. 

Nor  it  nor  no  remembrance  what  it  was: 

But  flowers  distill’d  though  they  with  winter  meet, 

Leese  but  their  show;  their  substance  still  lives  sweet.” 

No  botanist  can  read  the  line  “A  liquid  prisoner  pent  in 
walls  of  glass”  and  not  recognize  the  exact  portrayal  of  the 
living  vegetable  cell.  The  living  protoplasm  is  a  liquid  pris¬ 
oner  sure  enough,  hemmed  in  by  walls  transparent.  There 
could  be  no  more  striking  image.  And  when  in  herb  and 
tree,  in  every  living  plant,  the  summer’s  work  is  ended  and 
hideous  winter  falls,  the  new  cells,  summer’s  distillation  left, 
do  in  all  perennials  actually  survive,  lest  of  the  effect  of 
beauty,  beauty  be  bereft.  There  is  no  more  marvelous  pic¬ 
ture  in  all  the  vegetable  world  than  that  of  a  great  tree  with  all 
its  myriad  cells,  in  summer  so  filled  with  the  rush  of  life’s 
activity  and  change  that  we  might  hear  its  music,  in  autumn 
sinking  to  quiescence,  and  the  winter’s  silent  chill  where 
liquid  prisoners  sleep  ’neath  walls  of  glass.  The  poet  did  not 
understand  it;  he  simply  prophesied  better  than  he  knew.  ^ 
He  makes  us  think  of  Goethe,  of  Lucretius.  These  men 
made  happy  guesses.  Lucretius  especially  surprises  us  by 
his  views  on  the  constitution  of  matter — unverified;  so  far  as 
we  can  know.  Goethe  lived  in  the  age  of  science  and  went  on 
laboriously  to  verify  his  surmises.  The  only  natural  science 


16 


The  Botany  of  Shakespeare 


which  Shakespeare  knew  was  gardening — if  that  may  be 
called  a  science.  His  Sonnets  are  supposed  to  have  been 
written  about  1590,  and  the  first  scientific  glimpse  of  the 
“prisoner  pent  in  walls  of  glass”  came  about  1670,  through 
the  lenses  of  Nehemiah  Grew,  a  Puritan  physicist  and 
botanist. 

I  am  aware  that  it  is  said  by  some  that  in  a  critique  like 
this  we  are  apt  to  read  much  into  the  writings  of  our  author. 
The  quotations  I  have  submitted  show,  it  seems  to  me  that 
this  is  unnecessary  in  the  present  case  at  least.  The  words 
are  generally  unequivocal.  Of  course,  the  language  is  poet¬ 
ical,  metaphoric,  but  the  metaphor  has  reference  to  something 
else;  the  description  is  not  the  metaphor.  But,  in  fact,  ought 
we  to  expect  in  Shakespeare  very  exact  or  complete  descrip¬ 
tion?  His  whole  art  lies  in  the  power  of  suggestion.  The 
deep  impressions  a  man  of  genius  makes  upon  our  minds  lie 
often,  if  not  always,  in  what  he  does  not  say.  A  word  or 
two  and  the  vision  rises,  whether  in  Nature  or  in  life,  a  pas¬ 
sion  or  a  landscape.  Take  the  broken  phrases  of  Ophelia 
depicting  her  broken  heart,  her  “no  more  but  so;”  or  the 
picture  of  the  winter  woods  in  Sonnet  LXXIII: 

“That  time  of  the  year  thoumayest  in  me  behold 
When  yellow  leaves,  or  none,  or  few,  do  hang 
Upon  those  boughs  with  shake  against  the  cold, 

Bare  ruin’d  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang.’’ 

Does  any  one  pretend  that  we  are  reading  into  the  lines  when 
we  appreciate  the  marvelous  sorrow  of  the  one  picture  or  the 
<»  exquisite  truthfulness  and  splendor  of  the  other? 

Shakespeare’s  natural  eye  was  clear  indeed,  but  none  the 
less  he  seems  to  have  seen  everything  with  the  eye  of  his 
p  mind.  Faraday  so  saw  the  world  of  force,  Newton  of  math¬ 
ematical  law,  and  Tyndall’s  “scientific  use  of  the  imagina¬ 
tion”  lies  in  the  same  direction. 

And  so  the  man  of  science  and  the  poet  have  much  in  com¬ 
mon.  Both  use  the  natural  world,  and  the  imagination  is 
for  each  an  instrument  of  effort.  The  poet’s  generalization 


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is  a  splendid  vision  in  a  world  ideal,  suggested,  no  doubt,  by 
what  is  actual  and  liable  here  and  there  to  coincide  with  truth ; 
the  generalization  of  the  scientific  man  is  likewise  a  vision, 
but  it  rests  upon  the  actual,  upon  the  ascertained  fact  at  the 
greatest  number  of  points  possible,  and  disappoints  us  only 
that  it  is  not  everywhere  coincident.  The  poet  dreams  of 
Atlantis,  the  lost  continents,  the  islands  of  the  blest,  and 
builds  us  pictures  that  vanish  with  his  song;  the  man  of 
science  too  beholds  the  continents  rise;  scene  after  scene  he 
likewise  makes  to  pass  across  our  startled  vision;  but  his  are 
history ;  his  tapestries  are  wrought  in  the  loom  of  time. 

The  poet  writes  the  book  of  Genesis,  with  the  herbs  bring¬ 
ing  forth  fruit  after  their  kind;  the  man  of  science  figures 
fossil  leaves  and  cones  and  fruit.  Only  at  the  last  do  poetry 
and  science  possibly  again  agree ; 

“The  cloud-capped  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces, 

The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself — 

Yea,  all  which  it  inherit  shall  dissolve, 

And  like  this  insubstantial  pageant  faded,  leave  not  a  rack  behind!’' 

And  when  the  man  of  science  gathers  all  his  data,  and  col¬ 
lates  fact  with  fact,  and  builds  the  superstructure  of  his  vision, 
with  him,  too,  all  things  fade  and  vanish  in  the  infinity  of  the 
future. 


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